Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some advice from Jeff Bezos

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 140 posts

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#91

Post by jeremiep »

Xcelerate wrote: post #35

I would argue that this is the defining factor in what makes someone intelligent or not. If you're always revising your ways of thinking about a problem, your probability of converging on a solution is vastly greater than someone with a narrow, one-track focus. In fact, another article on the HN homepage ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness... ) elaborates on this point of trying multiple "s…

I couldn't agree more. Just a few weeks ago I was having an argument with a coworker over programming paradigms. Every time I would step outside his comfortable knowledge zone, he'd start getting impatient and angry.

Every argument with such people is a downhill battle. I have yet to find out how to open their minds to broader perspectives. It's always back to the allegory of the cave. Even when you have them in a corner with no possible arguments, they'd still ask "why would I need that?".

People need to be curious in order to be open-minded. It's quite hard to stay curious as an adult in this world while it is inborn to children. I get extremely curious about quite a few domains myself at the cost of alienating a quite few people when I talk about them.

I found out these people are almost always very attached to their past work, and tend to do everything else in the same general direction. They are dead afraid if they change their mind, people will think everything they did before is worth nothing and so are they.

They are devoted to their tools and methods rather than their general domain of work. Tools and methods come, evolve and go but the domain they represent always endures time.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#93

Post by jeremiep »

jeremiep wrote: post #91
Xcelerate wrote: post #35

I would argue that this is the defining factor in what makes someone intelligent or not. If you're always revising your ways of thinking about a problem, your probability of converging on a solution is vastly greater than someone with a narrow, one-track focus. In fact, another article on the HN homepage ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness... ) elaborates on this point of trying multiple "s…

I couldn't agree more. Just a few weeks ago I was having an argument with a coworker over programming paradigms. Every time I would step outside his comfortable knowledge zone, he'd start getting impatient and angry. Every argument with such people is a downhill battle. I have yet to find out how to open their minds to broader perspectives. It's always back to the allegory of the cave. Even when you have them in a co…

For example while rereading my post, I realized I use the word 'quite' too often. How about that.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#94

Post by msg »

badhairday wrote: post #4

Being right a lot is a core value of that Amazon requires in it's leaders. The rest of the list is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&...

Whether you are an individual contributor or a manager of a large team, you are an Amazon leader.

They are also meant for ICs, not just people-manager leaders. They are used as touchstones for interviews and performance evaluations.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#95

Post by TillE »

MartinCron wrote: post #85
dlss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it was really weird hitting the bottom of the article only to find a vaguely racist nonsensical byline.

I'm not going to defend the byline (because it's cheap and inappropriate for the context) but there is a distinction between racial humor and racist humor. Not everything that addresses the concept of race is automatically racist, especially when it's not mean-spirited or demeaning. It's a line that I'm not clever enough to tread, but other people seem to pull it off. Look at Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder. Very…

> especially when it's not mean-spirited or demeaning.

This is a common misunderstanding about the nature of racism. Read about Asian Americans and the model minority.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#96

Post by [deleted] »

Evbn wrote: post #74
powertower wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did you know that a spinning ball weighs more than the same ball when it is stationary? Did you know that the Earth's rotation itself adds about 2.38 billion metric tons to its mass, and we have the Soviet Union to thank for figuring that out? http://infranetlab.org/blog/2008/12/harnessing-the-energy-fr...

Hmm.... > The amount of energy in the earth is vast – the kinetic energy of rotation alone is 2.137 x 1029 Joules 10^29?

[deleted]

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#97

Post by brian_cloutier »

Xcelerate wrote: post #35

I would argue that this is the defining factor in what makes someone intelligent or not. If you're always revising your ways of thinking about a problem, your probability of converging on a solution is vastly greater than someone with a narrow, one-track focus. In fact, another article on the HN homepage ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness... ) elaborates on this point of trying multiple "s…

I only took high school physics and a Google search isn't returning anything. Could you tell me why a spinning ball weighs more than a stationary ball?

Another comment seems to claim that since E=mc2, rotational energy can be converted to to mass and viola, the earth is heavier because it has more energy! But that doesn't make sense to me.

Maybe frame dragging has something to do with it? Your pulling of space-time through rotation looks the same as your pulling of space-time from gravity so you appear heavier?

Or is it for the same reason that moving bodies are heavier? Every point of the ball is moving and therefore heavier, the fact that it's rotating makes no differece.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#98

Post by Firehed »

Xcelerate wrote: post #35

I would argue that this is the defining factor in what makes someone intelligent or not. If you're always revising your ways of thinking about a problem, your probability of converging on a solution is vastly greater than someone with a narrow, one-track focus. In fact, another article on the HN homepage ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness... ) elaborates on this point of trying multiple "s…

> Don't want to be like this? Don't get angry when someone challenges you. That's the best way to start. I've never understood why so many people get upset if you try to point out a flaw in their reasoning.

This is one of the first things I tell our new hires - please call us on doing something stupid or being closed-minded. Just like a child, ask "why" all the time. We may have the right solution in place to cover bizarre edge cases that they don't know about yet, but it's just as possible that their fresh perspective is a far better way to approach the problem.

I'll get annoyed if people are challenging stuff just for the sake of it, but any time there's a genuine improvement being proposed it's a welcome discussion.

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#99

Post by powertower »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #97
Xcelerate wrote: post #35

I would argue that this is the defining factor in what makes someone intelligent or not. If you're always revising your ways of thinking about a problem, your probability of converging on a solution is vastly greater than someone with a narrow, one-track focus. In fact, another article on the HN homepage ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness... ) elaborates on this point of trying multiple "s…

I only took high school physics and a Google search isn't returning anything. Could you tell me why a spinning ball weighs more than a stationary ball? Another comment seems to claim that since E=mc2, rotational energy can be converted to to mass and viola, the earth is heavier because it has more energy! But that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe frame dragging has something to do with it? Your pulling of space-time t…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence

Re: Some advice from Jeff Bezos

#100

Post by calinet6 »

In other words, be a scientist. Consider the truth as a distant target, and our understanding only as an approximation based on the evidence we have right now.

Scientists have known this for years. They have made it their whole way of life—because it works, and it's true.

Smart people in all walks of life most certainly follow those same kinds of scientific principles. Bezos is spot on, there's just an entire branch of knowledge that's been spot on way before he was.

Post reply on HN